DOCSLIB.ORG

The Emergence of Radical/Critical Geography Within North America

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

The Emergence of Radical/Critical Geography within North America Linda Peake1 Urban Studies Program, Department of Social Science York University, Canada [email protected] Eric Sheppard Department of Geography University of California, Los Angeles, USA [email protected] Abstract In this paper we aim to provide a historical account of the evolution of Anglophone radical/critical geography in North America. Our account is structured chronologically. First, we examine the spectral presence of radical / critical geography in North America prior to the mid-sixties. Second, we narrate the emergence of both radical and critical geography between 1964 / 1969 until the mid-1980s, when key decisions were taken that moved radical / critical geography into the mainstream of the discipline. Third, we examine events since the mid- 1980s, as radical geography merged into critical geography, becoming in the process something of a canon in mainstream Anglophone human geography. We conclude that while radical / critical geography has succeeded in its aim of advancing critical geographic theory, it has been less successful in its aim of 1 Published under Creative Commons licence: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2 Eric’s first exposure was as an undergraduate at Bristol in 1971 when the newly hired lecturer Keith Bassett, freshly returned from Penn State, brought a stack of Antipodes to one of his lectures. Linda’s radical awakening also came in the UK, in the late 1970s courtesy of her lecturers at Reading University. Sophie Bowlby took her The Emergence of Radical/Critical Geography in North America 306 increasing access to the means of knowledge production to become a peoples’ geography that is grounded in a desire for working towards social change. Purporting to provide a historical account of the evolution of Anglophone radical/critical geography in North America is a hazardous proposition. First, the sheer quantity of radical/critical geography within this relatively confined area of the globe is enormous: spanning more than forty years (and arguably much longer), and innumerable individuals, organizations, activities and academic and non- academic writings. This cannot possibly be captured adequately in a single paper, nor can definitive definitions of these wide ranging fields in terms of their content or purposes. Second, and relatedly, many such accounts are possible, each marked by the situated knowledge of the narrators. Our perspective is that of two relative latecomers to what at that time was known as radical geography; neither of us participated in the early years.2 In writing this paper, we have attempted to plumb the recollections of early participants we could identify, but inevitably what we write is not what they would have written. Our particular predilections about what is significant inevitably shape this account. This is not, then, the definitive story, but a provocation: one particular account that can only be enriched as others react to, correct, and differently narrate these events. Third, as critical scholars we must be alert to the occlusions made possible by the few already existing narratives of the emergence of radical geography in Anglophone North America—accounts that become canonical simply by dint of the lack of alternatives. In particular, we interrogate the conventional wisdom, today, that radical geography emerged out of Clark University with the publication of Antipode in 1969, and was primarily Marxist. This is the case, but there also was much more. Fourth, as geographers we must be alert to the geography of knowledge production. In interrogating conventional wisdom, therefore, we begin to disinter both the theoretical/ideological variegation, characterizing the field from its beginnings but unevenly though time, as well as outlining the complex spatialities connecting the US with Anglo-Canada and beyond. Our account is structured chronologically. First, we examine the spectral presence of radical / critical geography in North America prior to the mid-sixties. Second, we narrate the emergence of both radical and critical geography between 1964 / 1969 until the mid-1980s, when key decisions were taken that moved radical / critical geography into the mainstream of the discipline. Third, we examine events since the mid-1980s, as radical geography merged into critical geography becoming in the process something of a canon in mainstream Anglophone human geography. 2 Eric’s first exposure was as an undergraduate at Bristol in 1971 when the newly hired lecturer Keith Bassett, freshly returned from Penn State, brought a stack of Antipodes to one of his lectures. Linda’s radical awakening also came in the UK, in the late 1970s courtesy of her lecturers at Reading University. Sophie Bowlby took her to her first Women and Geography Group meeting, introducing her to Suzanne Mackenzie, among others, while John Short and Andrew Kirby introduced her to other radical work in the discipline. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 2014, 13 (2), 305-327 307 Hauntings: Radical Geographers avant la lettre It might be expected that we begin in the tumultuous times of the mid and late 1960s, dating the birth of North American radical geography to 1969 (Castree 2000). The story has been widely told of a staid discipline, caught between a Hartshornian regionalist past and its aspirations to be recognized as a value-free spatial science, whose disengagement with the world was disrupted by the impact of the May 1968 student revolts in Europe and the anti-Vietnam war and civil rights movements in the United States (Peet 1977, 2000). But this would be to ignore the precursors of that time, those individual scholars already mapping out potential routes toward radical/critical geography. Four men are widely acknowledged as radical geographers whose political and academic contributions predated 1969, and since have been assessed and analyzed: the Russian anarcho- communist Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921) and French anarchist Élysée Reclus (1830-1905), and the German and American Sinologists, Karl Wittfogel (1896- 1988) and Owen Lattimore (1900-89) (Clark and Martin 2004, Dunbar 1978, Galois 1976, Harvey 1983, Peet 1985).3 Yet others’ contributions have been overlooked. For example, Mary Arizona (Zonia) Baber (1862-1956), a founder of the Chicago Geographical Society, was committed to peace, antiracism, and conservation, and worked closely with Puerto Rican suffragist movements (Monk 2004). No doubt, Baber is just one of a number of radical geographers, otherwise gendered and racialised, whose contributions have been sidelined and then elided by the “1969 story”, and await recovery in the name of tracing multiple histories, situated knowledges, counternarratives, silences, and lacunae.4 By the mid 1960s, a handful of radical geographers were percolating the field, also shaping what was to happen in 1969. Most importantly in moving radical geography beyond the academy, Bill Bunge, a communist when he wrote his paean to quantitative geography (Bunge 1966, Akatiff, personal communication), co- founded the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute (DGEI) with the African American community leader Gwendolyn Warren in 1968. The Expedition and Institute was committed to practicing the kind of radical pedagogy and activist research on issues of poverty and race widely espoused today by post-structural and feminist geographers; it operated at the University of Michigan, and then Michigan State, until the latter closed it at the end of 1970 (Heyman 2007, Horvath 1971). Clark Akatiff had entered UCLA’s graduate program in 1960 as a Marxist, was hired as an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University in 1966 and participated in the Detroit Expedition (Akatiff 2007). Jim Blaut, life-long leftist, joined the faculty at Clark in 1967, having returned from five years in the 3 In 1952, former communist Wittfogel denounced Lattimore during the McCarthy hearings (Lattimore 1950). 4 Not least, Thelma Glass, a professor at Alabama State College, who helped establish the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery Alabama, which organized the Montgomery bus strike led by Martin Luther King (see George, Monk and Gaston 2004). The Emergence of Radical/Critical Geography in North America 308 Caribbean, including a stint in Puerto Rico where he joined its Movimiento Pro Independencia (Mathewson 2005, Santana 2005). In October 1967, Blaut and co- conspirator David Stea flew Jim’s plane to Washington D. C., to observe the countercultural attempt to ‘levitate the Pentagon’: Akatiff was at the protest (Akatiff, 1974b).5 When Ben Wisner arrived at Clark in 1968, radicalized by the anti-war movement and experiences in Tanzania, a small group of radical geographers was already active.6 While not self-identified as radical, several sympathetic geographers helped create space in a hostile disciplinary and political environment, across both Canada and the United States, including Jim Lemon, Robert McNee, Richard Morrill, Phil Wagner, Julian Wolpert, and Wilbur Zelinsky. Of course, what is striking about this list is its exclusivity. Neither women nor people of colour feature in accounts of this period of North American radical academic geography, yet the seeds of their participation were also sown during this time and they were to figure increasingly in developing both radical and critical geography, although this has been more the case for the former than the latter.7 Their absence in these reflections speaks strongly to the
Recommended publications
  • Introduction: Places Post-Colonialism Forgot (And How to Find Them)

    Introduction: Places Post-Colonialism Forgot (And How to Find Them)

    Introduction: Places Post-Colonialism Forgot (and How to Find Them) David Butz1 Brock University [email protected] The four papers in this themed issue had their first public airing in a session titled “Places Post-Colonialism Forgot: New Examinations of Center and Periphery” at the 2009 Las Vegas AAG Meetings. The session was co-organised by Karen Morin and Tamar Rothenberg, and sponsored by the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group, the Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group, and the Historical Geography Specialty Group; I was one of the discussants. The papers’ thematic coherence as a set hinges on two similarities. Each piece focuses on something that its author or authors think post-colonial analysis has overlooked or excluded – ways that groups constitute themselves, experiences of subordination, diasporic identities, and ongoing peripheralizations. And each paper deals in its way with the effects of centre/periphery dichotomies. Pamela Shurmer-Smith provides a glimpse at the remembrances, lives and identities of former White Northern Rhodesians who now, in diaspora, find themselves in locations that are peripheral to what remain the geographical centres of their identity; Ian Baird argues that the core concepts of post-colonial studies peripheralize certain instances of colonialism; Ellis draws from her research on middle class political formations in Chennai, India, to criticize post-colonial scholarship on India for relegating class to the peripheries of its analyses; Karen Morin and Tamar Rothenberg draw attention to pervasive centre/periphery binaries 1 Creative Commons licence: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 2011, 10 (1), 42-47 43 in the social and spatial configuration of higher education.
  • Fourth World Nation: a Critical Geography of Decline

    Fourth World Nation: a Critical Geography of Decline

    FOURTH WORLD NATION: A CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF DECLINE by Olon Frederick Dotson A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of American Studies West Lafayette, Indiana August 2019 2 THE PURDUE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL STATEMENT OF COMMITTEE APPROVAL Dr. Bill Mullen, Chair College of Liberal Arts, American Studies Dr. Leonard Harris College of Liberal Arts, American Studies Dr. Cornelius Bynum College of Liberal Arts, American Studies Dr. Stephen Paul O’Hara Xavier University, Department of History Approved by: Dr. Rayvon Fouché Head of the Graduate Program 3 This research effort is dedicated to Cloice C. Dotson. Without exception, you have been all that a father is supposed to be. If I could only begin to approach the level of responsibility and devotion that you have demonstrated as a father and mentor to me, you can be assured that your grandchildren, and someday, their children, will be able to make their way in this Fourth World Nation. With love and gratitude, Your son. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My late mother, my motherly stepmother, my sisters and brother, my friends and colleagues Wes, Lisa, Karen, Pam, Ted, Nihal, John, Michael and John, staff and faculty at Ball State, (first encouraged me to pursue doctoral studies) my Committee Chair: Bill Mullen, and Committee Members, Leonard Harris and Cornelius L. Bynum, my external committee member S. Paul O’Hara, Richard Hogan, Nathalia Jaramillo, Rayvon Fouche’, folk in the trenches, the late Grace Lee Boggs, the late Reverend Emory Davis, Malik Yakini, Imhotep Adisa, Pam Dorr, David Elkins, Wayne Curtis, Myrtle Thompson, Sylvester Brown, Elizabeth Patton-Whiteside.
  • Critical Geography in Germany

    Critical Geography in Germany

    Soc. Geogr. Discuss., 5, 117–144, 2009 www.soc-geogr-discuss.net/5/117/2009/ Social Geography SGD © Author(s) 2009. This work is distributed under Discussions 5, 117–144, 2009 the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Social Geography Discussions is the access reviewed discussion forum of Social Geography Critical geography in Germany B. Belina et al. Critical geography in Germany: from Title Page exclusion to inclusion via Abstract Introduction internationalisation Conclusions References Tables Figures B. Belina1, U. Best2, and M. Naumann3 1Frankfurt University, Department of Human Geography, Robert-Mayer-Str. 6–8, J I 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany 2Chemnitz University of Technology, European Studies, Straße der Nationen 62, J I 09107 Chemnitz, Germany Back Close 3University of Hamburg, Department of Geography, Bundesstr. 55, 20146 Hamburg, Germany Full Screen / Esc Received: 28 November 2008 – Accepted: 27 February 2009 – Published: 18 March 2009 Correspondence to: B. Belina ([email protected]) Printer-friendly Version Published by Copernicus Publications. Interactive Discussion 117 Abstract SGD Critical perspectives have become more visible in German human geography. Drawing on an analysis of the debate around the German reader “Kulturgeographie” published 5, 117–144, 2009 in 2003, we suggest that this case provides new insights into the “geography of critical 5 geography”. We briefly discuss the history of left geography in Germany, leading to Critical geography in a comparison of the conditions of left geography around 1980 and in recent years. Germany The focus is on two factors in the changed role of critical perspectives in German geography: (1) the growing internationalisation of German geography, which opened B.
  • Space Invaders: Critical Geography, the Third World in International Law and Critical Race Theory

    Space Invaders: Critical Geography, the Third World in International Law and Critical Race Theory

    Volume 45 Issue 5 Article 5 2000 Space Invaders: Critical Geography, the Third World in International Law and Critical Race Theory Keith Aoki Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons Recommended Citation Keith Aoki, Space Invaders: Critical Geography, the Third World in International Law and Critical Race Theory, 45 Vill. L. Rev. 913 (2000). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol45/iss5/5 This Symposia is brought to you for free and open access by Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Villanova Law Review by an authorized editor of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository. Aoki: Space Invaders: Critical Geography, the Third World in Internatio 2000] SPACE INVADERS: CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY, THE "THIRD WORLD" IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY* KEITH AoKI** TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION: WHY "SPACE" MATTERS: A PARADOX AND A Q UESTION ................................................ 914 II. THE POLITICS OF "PLACE" AND "SPACE" IN THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY .......................................... 917 III. THE CRITIQUE OF DEVELOPMENT IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: WHERE EXACTLY IS THE "THIRD WORLD"? .................. 924 IV. LIBERAL V. "CULTURAL NATIONALIST" VISIONS OF "RACE" .... 931 V. RACE, PLACE AND SPACE MATTER ........................... 936 A. Geography and Sovereignty: Richard Thompson Ford ........ 939 B. Spatial and Geographic Marginalizationat the Intersection of Race and Class ........................................ 942 1. John 0. Calmore ................................... 942 2. Chantal Thomas ................................... 944 C. Global Markets, Racial Spaces and the Legal Struggle for Community Control of Investment ........................ 949 1. Elizabeth M . Iglesias ................................ 949 2. Audrey G.
  • Introduction

    Introduction

    NEL1 9/23/2004 1:21 PM Page 1 Chapter 1 Introduction Lise Nelson and Joni Seager The Poetics of Bodies, Spaces, Place, and Politics my womb a public domain erotica a doormat trampled on by birthright my womb a legislated periphery no longer mine but public space my womb a palestinian front fighting for the right to be a private space “My Womb” by Esmeralda Bernal (reprinted with permission from the publisher of The Americas Review, Houston: Arte Publico Press–University of Houston, 1986) The ideas and materialities woven into Bernal’s poem evoke some of the key insights and sites of feminist geography. Locating her poem within the gendered body, Bernal weaves together the politics of public and private space, the state and nationalism. While no single poem can represent the diverse issues and questions in feminist geog- raphy, the centrality of the body in her poem is significant. Only a few decades after feminists levered “woman” and “gender” into the lexicon of geographic thought, it is “the body” and the multidimensionality of embodied experience(s) that con- tinue to anchor feminist geography at the dawn of the twenty-first century. NEL1 9/23/2004 1:21 PM Page 2 2 LISE NELSON AND JONI SEAGER The body is the touchstone of feminist theory. Within contemporary feminist theory “the body” does not have a single location or scale; rather it is a concept that disrupts naturalized dichotomies and embraces a multiplicity of material and symbolic sites, ones located at the interstices of power exercised under various guises. From the pivotal second-wave feminist understanding that “the personal is political” to the postmodern decentering of a singular notion of gendered experi- ence, feminist theory draws on understandings of embodied experience to funda- mentally challenge bedrocks of Western social and political thought.
  • Feminist Geographies of Difference, Relation, And

    Feminist Geographies of Difference, Relation, And

    FEMINIST GEOGRAPHIES OF DIFFERENCE, 4 RELATION, AND CONSTRUCTION Deborah P. Dixon and John Paul Jones III Introduction and their associated methodologies: hence the plural ‘geographies’ in the title of this Feminist geography is concerned first and chapter. To facilitate our survey of feminist foremost with improving women’s lives by geography, we draw out three main lines of understanding the sources, dynamics, and research. Each of these holds the concept of spatiality of women’s oppression, and with gender to be central to the analysis, but they documenting strategies of resistance. In differ in their understanding of the term. accomplishing this objective, feminist geo- Under the heading of gender as difference, graphy has proven itself time and again as a we first consider those forms of feminist source for innovative thought and practice geographic analysis that address the spatial across all of human geography.The work of dimensions of the different life experiences feminist geographers has transformed research of men and women across a host of cultural, into everyday social activities such as wage economic, political, and environmental arenas. earning, commuting, maintaining a family Second, we point to those analyses that (however defined), and recreation, as well as understand gender as a social relation. Here, major life events, such as migration, procre- the emphasis shifts from studying men and ation, and illness. It has propelled changes in women per se to understanding the social debates over which basic human needs such relations that link men and women in com- as shelter, education, food, and health care are plex ways. In its most hierarchical form, these discussed, and it has fostered new insights relations are realized as patriarchy – a spatially into global and regional economic transfor- and historically specific social structure that mations, government policies, and settlement works to dominate women and children.
  • Anarchism What Geography Still Ought to Be

    Anarchism What Geography Still Ought to Be

    Anarchism! What Geography Still Ought To Be Simon Springer Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria BC, Canada; [email protected] Abstract: This article is a manifesto for anarchist geographies, which are understood as kaleidoscopic spatialities that allow for multiple, non-hierarchical, and protean connections between autonomous entities, wherein solidarities, bonds, and affinities are voluntarily assembled in opposition to and free from the presence of sovereign violence, predetermined norms, and assigned categories of belonging. In its rejection of such multivariate apparatuses of domination, this article is a proverbial call to non-violent arms for those geographers and non-geographers alike who seek to put an end to the seemingly endless series of tragedies, misfortunes, and catastrophes that characterize the miasma and malevolence of the current neoliberal moment. But this is not simply a demand for the end of neoliberalism and its replacement with a more moderate and humane version of capitalism, nor does it merely insist upon a more egalitarian version of the state. It is instead the resurrection of a prosecution within geography that dates back to the discipline’s earliest days: anarchism! Keywords: anarchism, colonialism, Marxism, neoliberalism, postanarchism, radical geography Introduction We, “frightful Anarchists” as we are, know only one way of establishing peace and goodwill among women and men—the suppression of privilege and the recognition of right ...It pleases us not to live if the enjoyments of life are to be for us alone; we protest against our good fortune if we may not share it with others; it is sweeter for us to wander with the wretched and the outcasts than to sit, crowned with roses, at the banquets of the rich.
  • King's Research Portal

    King's Research Portal

    King’s Research Portal DOI: 10.1177/1363460718779209 Document Version Peer reviewed version Link to publication record in King's Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Hubbard, P. (2018). Geography and sexuality: why space (still) matters. SEXUALITIES, 21(8), 1295-1299. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460718779209 Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Research Portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognize and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. •Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. •You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain •You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Research Portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
  • 'Critical' Geographies

    'Critical' Geographies

    Area (1999) 31.3, 195-1 98 Research, action and ‘critical’ geographies R M Kitchin” and P J Hubbardt *Department of Geography, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. Email: [email protected]. tDepartment of Geography, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU. Email: [email protected] In the 199Os, the notion of ‘doing’ critical geogra- teaching and writing. Given the current espousal of phies has become one of the central themes infusing ’critical’ geography as a form of geographical prac- human geographic study. Eschewing the strictures tice that is politically and socially aware, it might be of radical Marxist approaches (which principally considered surprising that the interface between focused on the forms of oppression and inequality academia and activism has been little explored in the wrought by capitalist process), critical geography geographic literature (for exceptions, see Routledge has consequently sought to examine the diverse 1996; Chouinard 1997; forthcoming Kitchin 1999). sociospatial processes that regulate and reproduce Indeed, the absence of critical reflection on the social exclusion. The lens of critical geographers has merits and limitations of action-led or participatory thus widened from a narrow focus on capital-labour research indicates that such efforts remain few and relations to encompass broader processes of social far between. As such, it appears that many social disadvantage and marginalization as they affect and cultural geographers are happy to survey (and women, ethnic minorities, sexual dissidents, disabled ‘map’) the exclusionary landscape, but rarely do people and so on. Simultaneously, this ’critical much to change that landscape apart from the agenda’ has been accompanied by a heightened occasional token nod to ‘planning and policy concern that the geographer’s research on social recommendations’.
  • Grounded Theologies: 'Religion' and the 'Secular' in Human Geography

    Grounded Theologies: 'Religion' and the 'Secular' in Human Geography

    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Singapore Management University Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Research Collection School of Social Sciences School of Social Sciences 2-2013 Grounded theologies: ‘Religion’ and the ‘secular’ in human geography Justin Kh TSE Singapore Management University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research Part of the Geography Commons, and the Religion Commons Citation TSE, Justin Kh.(2013). Grounded theologies: ‘Religion’ and the ‘secular’ in human geography. Progress in Human Geography, 38(2), 201-220. Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3134 This Journal Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Social Sciences at Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Collection School of Social Sciences by an authorized administrator of Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. For more information, please email [email protected]. Article Progress in Human Geography 2014, Vol. 38(2) 201–220 ª The Author(s) 2013 Grounded theologies: Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav ‘Religion’ and the ‘secular’ DOI: 10.1177/0309132512475105 in human geography phg.sagepub.com Justin K.H. Tse The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Abstract This paper replies to Kong’s (2010) lament that geographers of religion have not sufficiently intervened in religious studies. It advocates ‘grounded theologies’ as a rubric by which to investigate contemporary geographies of religion in a secular age.
  • The Story of My Face: How Environmental Stewards Perceive Stigmatization (Re)Produced by Discourse

    The Story of My Face: How Environmental Stewards Perceive Stigmatization (Re)Produced by Discourse

    Sustainability 2010, 2, 3339-3353; doi:10.3390/su2113339 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Article The Story of My Face: How Environmental Stewards Perceive Stigmatization (Re)produced By Discourse Jutta Gutberlet 1,* and Bruno de Oliveira Jayme 2 1 Department of Geography, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3060 STN CSC, Victoria, B.C., V8W 3R4, Canada 2 Interdisciplinary Program, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3060 STN CSC, Victoria, B.C., V8W 3R4, Canada; E-Mail: [email protected] * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +1-250-472-4537; Fax: +1-250-721-6216. Received: 25 August 2010; in revised form: 19 October 2010 / Accepted: 21 October 2010 / Published: 27 October 2010 Abstract: The story of my face intertwines concepts of social semiotics and discourse analysis to explore how a simple type of printed media (flyer) can generate stigmatization of informal recyclers, known as binners in Western Canada. Every day, media exposes humans to signifiers (e.g., words, photographs, cartoons) that appear to be trivial but influence how we perceive their meaning. Amongst the signifiers frequently found in the media, the word “scavengers”, has been used to refer to autonomous recyclers. Specific discourse has the potential to promote and perpetuate discrimination against the individuals who deal with selective collection of recyclables and decrease the value of their work. Their work is valuable because it generates income for recyclers, recovers resources and improves overall environmental health. In this context, the present qualitative study draws on data collected with binners during research conducted in the city of Victoria, in British Columbia.
  • Marxism and Geography in the Anglophone World

    Marxism and Geography in the Anglophone World

    Essay Neil Smith Marxism and Geography in the Anglophone World In October 1997 an article appeared in the impeccably bourgeois magazine, the New Yorker, which championed Karl Marx as the “next new thinker”. Down on Wall Street, wrote John Cassidy, there is a new appreciation for Marx’s understanding of capitalism, and a sense that Marx anticipated brilliantly what so-called globalization was all about th (Cassidy 1997). The impending 150 anniversary of The Communist Manifesto intensified the clamour. As Marx and Engels famously wrote there, the bourgeoisie “creates a world after its own image”, and so with the dragon of international socialism apparently slain after 1989, despite local holdouts in Cuba and North Korea, and with Marx no longer the demon of capital, expectant young Wall Street financiers could embrace Marx’s vivid depiction of capitalism as a remarkably prescient portrait of the neo-liberal global order they themselves strove to create. Marx had brilliantly anticipated globalization, and Wall Street thought it was a good thing. But the “Marx boom” of 1997-98 quickly fizzled as capitalism itself turned sour. The Asian economic crisis exploded, Indonesia’s Suharto was overthrown in a deadly revolt, and the economic malaise spread to Brazil, Mexico and Russia. Marx, it seemed, still had a sting in his tail. Reading Das Kapital to understand how capitalism really worked was one thing. But the same Das Kapital also seemed to teach that economic depression was endemic to capitalism, the stock market was a giant swindle, the Asian economic crisis – rooted in overproduction in Thailand and generalized into the region’s currency and security markets – was a classic capitalist crisis, and that political struggle is equally endemic to capitalism.